Professor Dennis Foley

Griffith Business School's 2022 Outstanding First Peoples Alumnus

MBA / Bachelor of Business

Griffith University boasts a long and proud record of attracting and keeping First Nations students and its continued success can be traced back to a period more than thirty years ago.

“In the early 1990s, under Professor Margaret Gardiner, I helped work with the team researching Griffith’s first Indigenous recruitment and career development strategy and I say it is still one the best around and a lot of other universities have tried to copy it since,” Professor Dennis Foley said.

Today Professor Foley is one of many leading figures in First Nations education and lauded as one of the fathers of Indigenous business and entrepreneurship development in Australia.

Recently he retired as Australia’s first Professor of Indigenous Entrepreneurship at the University of Canberra. He was a founding Director of The NSW Indigenous Chamber of Commerce and lobbied for almost a decade to improve the economic opportunities of Indigenous Australian entrepreneurs.

Dennis can thank ‘the indignity of retrenchment’ from the Banking industry for his ascension into the top sphere of academia and policymaking.

“At 35 I was made redundant for the first time in the banking industry. I was starting at it again in my late thirties and with no qualifications decided to do an arts degree at my local university which was Griffith at the Gold Coast.” he said.

That was in 1992. He walked out some years later not just with a Bachelor of Business degree but also a research role in the university’s Human Resources department.

Dennis’s research was of the old-fashioned variety where you got your walking shoes on and met and spoke to people. One project involved asking more than 100 Indigenous students why they had dropped out of uni.  Their answers helped frame a recruitment strategy which embedded Griffith’s commitment to becoming a leader in First Nation student engagement.

“Not only did I speak to the students but to their parents as well. It was clear it was all about a lack of funding and community perceptions of study, so I set about writing a program while also being able to get money to employ staff to help better engage the students resulting in ‘real’ jobs.”

The strategy changed lives for the better.

“They were kids that did not have a chance and they were given a second chance and they proved themselves. You might have had a failure rate of four out of five, but it’s decreased dramatically since. You only need one student get through and the domino effect on the family including nieces and nephews is just phenomenal.”

A Master's degree at Griffith beckoned and awarded by the turn of the century. Then it was off to The University of Queensland for a Doctorate. In between academic recognition flowed with a Fulbright scholarship, two Endeavour fellowships and a prestigious Golden Key Award. Plus, numerous Australian Research Council grants and the Canadian Humanities equivalent. Dennis still sits on the review board of several prestigious international research bodies.

Now Professor Dennis Foley is the University’s Outstanding First Peoples Alumnus Award recipient for Griffith Business School for 2022.

“I was the first in my family to get an undergraduate degree and that was at the ripe old age of 45”, he said. “To receive this honour from the University that welcomed me as a mature age student is humbling and I am very proud”. My daughter followed in my footsteps obtaining a Bachelor of Nursing, wearing my Gown and hat at her graduation which was a wonderful life experience.

Between these academic pursuits, Dennis found time to help establish Australia’s first-degree program in Contemporary Australian Indigenous Art which has bloomed into the internationally recognised finishing school for the nation’s leading Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists.

Now in his late sixties and with no signs of slowing down, Dennis looks back at his time at Griffith as truly transformative.

“The place is full of wonderful equity stories which I saw first-hand in my time at Griffith, and it remains close to my heart.

“From speaking to many people, they all recognise Griffith as a champion in diversity always doing the right thing when from a social conscience perspective, after all Griffith was the first University to create a PVC Equity which cemented their commitment not only to our issues, it also proved invaluable in other minority development policy and practices.”

In 2022, Dennis and Griffith sound like a perfect fit but a reunion may have to wait.

“I love Canberra, the ANU and UC and being close to the decision-makers.  I could be be tempted to come back if Griffith sets up a satellite campus or perhaps a Business School in the nations capital.”